Report finds development banks fail people harmed by their projects: Civil society calls on banks to strengthen their complaint mechanisms to provide remedy
A new report launched today by several BIC partners documents the hurdles communities and workers face in obtaining remedy from development banks whose projects cause them harm. Glass Half Full? The State of Accountability in Development Finance calls on development banks to “strengthen their systems for providing remedy to those harmed by the activities financed by the banks.”
The report focuses on development bank independent accountability mechanisms, which receive complaints from communities adversely affected by bank-financed activities. Glass Half Full? assesses the extent to which these mechanisms are equipped to handle development impacts including environmental degradation, damage to livelihoods, or human rights violations.
The authoring organizations, including Accountability Counsel, Inclusive Development International, and Center for Environmental Law, conclude that:
…even though complainants are undoubtedly better off than they would be in the absence of any complaint procedure, the outcome rarely provides adequate remedy for the harms experienced by people and communities. This is largely due to the development banks themselves, which undermine the effectiveness of their own complaint mechanisms by limiting their mandate and failing to uphold their own responsibilities in the complaint process. The banks impede the accessibility and effectiveness of the complaint mechanisms from the very beginning by failing to require their borrowers to tell project-affected people about their existence.Even more critically, the banks have limited the mandates of the mechanisms so that they cannot issue binding decisions. Rather, the outcome of complaints depends primarily on the good will of the banks or their borrowers: unless governments and companies voluntarily agree to resolve the conflict through dialogue, or the bank voluntarily agrees to address violations of its policies exposed through an investigation conducted by the mechanism, complainants are left without a solution.
The full report and its annexes are available here: www.glass-half-full.org